Doc Corner: The latest musician biographies
Sunday, June 4, 2023 at 11:02AM 
You’re a little bit damned if you do and a little bit damned if you don’t when it comes to musician bio-docs these days. They remain prolific, a cottage industry that is popular with audiences and easy choices for distributors and sales agents with a built-in audience. It makes sense that we get so many of them each year. And if you’re not inclined to watch so many of them, you may not be as burnt out on them as I appear to be. But—and I swear I’m not just being grumpy—are they actually getting worse, too? They certainly don’t seem to be getting any better, with most choosing to abandon any real directorial vision in favour of standard story beats.
Three recent examples all have strong elements, telling their subject’s life story in ways that I have no doubt will appeal to many fans, devoted or casual alike. But Love to Love You, Donna Summer; John Farnham: Finding the Voice and Fanny: The Right to Rock have all left me relatively cold despite the icons at their centre, plagued by frustrating tech choices and failing to reach the heights of the music that made their subjects famous in the first place.
For Love to Love You, directors Roger Ross Williams (a doc short Oscar winner plus nominee for Life Animated) and Summers’ own daughter, Brooklyn Sudano have at least tried to eschew some of the more rusted on bio-doc techniques. Absent are other musicians and historians detailing what made Summer so fascinating as a singer and a celebrity. Relying solely on voice-over interviews with Summer’s family, the effect is sometimes something more dreamlike or impressionistic as they speak over generations of scratchy, illuminating video footage. But at nearly two hours, Donna Summer doesn’t leave us with any grand concept of the singer beyond that of a woman with a fantastic voice who happened to sing some popular songs.
Which is disappointing, because as the so-called Queen of Disco, she was underestimated and undervalued for her entire career. If not now, when? You wouldn’t know half of her accomplishments by watching this movie. And while we should not watch a movie such as Love to Love You for a list of awards and iconic moments (we can go to Wikipedia for that), the doc (despite its family connection behind the scenes) appears to give her short shrift with little to no exploration of her musicianship and the walls she helped tear down as a black woman singing about sex and equality.
There’s a tunnel vision to the story being told here that, through some weird editing and scripting choices, abandons her musical skills for less interesting detours into her private life. I’m happy her daughter maybe got some closure here, but it isn’t scintillating viewing. A late-period scandal involving apparent homophobic comments in the press is subsequently swept aside, too. Perhaps an instance of Williams and Sudano choosing to avoid the obvious narrative crescendo (good!) in favour of more middling personal musings (bad!).
Love to Love You, Donna Summer is now streaming on HBO/Max/??
On the flip side, is John Farnham: Finding the Voice, which doesn’t for a single moment let the viewer forget that for many Australians he is the greatest and most defining voice to have ever sprung forth from this, his (adopted) homeland. Director Poppy Stockell doesn’t just want to give Farnham his flowers, she wants to worship him with this cinematic alter. The film throws in every trope you could dream of—including narration from his friend, the late Olivia Newton-John, on which her voice sounds coarse and deteriorated and has the undesired effect of adding a layer of morbid funereal sadness to its narrative.
It's a great story, true. Albeit a familiar one. But Stockell deploys some truly perplexing and frustrating editing and sound mix choices that hamper it. As a result, the film never soars to the levels of one of his songs (not least of which, “You’re the Voice”, an international hit in the 1980s). We constantly get people telling us how great his music was, but the music itself is chopped up and fussed over to an absurd degree. This includes one particularly amazing bit of footage where Farnham performs in West Germany. Or when footage of Farnham performing with Jimmy Barnes is used over narration about his performing with Olivia Newton-John. Weird.
John Farnham: Finding the Voice is currently in Australian cinemas, with other countries to follow (likely on VOD or streaming).
My favourite of the trio is Fanny: The Right to Rock. If only because its lower budget and the scrappier, low-key drive of director Bobbi Jo Hart allowed me to forgive some of its more familiar flourishes. Knowing less about Fanny helps; although their story mimics many others so it, too, struggles to really fly when the musicians at its core deserve it so much. It has a mission to prove the band’s place in history—and unlike many others, the band and its core really need that. But, yet again, something goes missing when the music gets repeatedly intercut with interviews and observations about how good the music is. While it’s great that many (including several male musicians) are on hand to praise Fanny and recognise what they meant to the culture and to the industry, I came away from The Right to Rock without much perspective or insight into the music itself.
Luckily for Hart, the story of Fanny overlaps with a lot of other issues that give The Right to Rock a sturdier platform of relevance. In light of Tina Turner’s passing (the queen of rock and roll, herself the recipient of a fine-if-standard doc, Tina), it’s great that the industry’s unfair treatment of women in rock music gets a further spotlight. The film gets great mileage from its sequences of the newly reformed band recording new music, showing a side to music that compares well with last year’s Tanya Tucker doc. And as a story to tell, the rise of Filipina women especially in the white male dominated rock scene is a vital one.
Fanny: The Right to Rock is now streaming on PBS.
Reader Comments (5)
I was surprised at how uninteresting the Donna Summer documentary managed to be. During the memorable duet between Summer and Streisand, the film addresses Summer’s dispute with her record company over the single’s release date. This will not be appearing on any end of year “best” lists.
Strongly recommend the new Mary Tyler Moore documentary on HBO, she’s quite a thorny subject for “biography” treatment and I feel I understand her much better from watching the film.
The first two acts of her life are well documented: first, queen of TV comedy…and then Ordinary People, tragedy, alcoholism. It’s a pleasure to get a view into the last 30 years of her life, which seemed quite peaceful and joyful. I’m a massive fan and didn’t expect to learn so much.
Thank you for your dedication to celebrating the lives and achievements of musicians through the medium of documentary filmmaking. Your love for music and storytelling is evident, and your work enriches the cinematic experience for readers. Keep up the excellent work, and I look forward to reading more of your captivating articles in the future!"
I think the Donna Summer doc goes a lot deeper than this review gives it credit for. It's not intended as a 'Behind the Music' style VH1 special. I felt I learned a lot about Summer's inner life. And, you still get generous helpings of her music and performance clips.
FANNY on the other hand WOULD have been better as a one hour 'Behind the Music' thing. The story basically runs out half-way through and the rest is filled in with showing the older survivors putting together an indie album. And, even that half is incomplete because the co-lead singer and writer, Nickey Barclay, refused to cooperate.
I watched Love to Love You and left feeling like I knew as much about Donna Summer as I did before - a lot, but not in the way that a good doctor would make you feel like it was a small world cup. And don't even get me started on the bunch of talking heads repeating the same anecdotes they've told in every other documentary about the artist.